


on keeping promises and building coffins

by eraserheadbaby



Category: Fate/Grand Order, Fate/stay night & Related Fandoms
Genre: Blood and Gore, Death Wish, Dreams, F/M, Teacher-Student Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-19
Updated: 2019-12-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:07:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,350
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21853438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eraserheadbaby/pseuds/eraserheadbaby
Summary: Somewhere over Gáe Bolg's majestic skeleton, fingers meet, and the weight of an eerie promise oppresses the air around them.
Relationships: Cú Chulainn | Lancer / Scáthach | Lancer
Kudos: 13





	on keeping promises and building coffins

Scáthach’s entire existence has always been a pulp inside the darkness, so this moment, where all she sees around her is black, black like trickle after trickle of molasses, is ordinary like few things are. A solitary shine pierces through the darkness- Gáe Bolg, her beloved spear, with its red the brightest it’s ever seemed, is pointing right at her chest, where she can feel a faint beat if she focuses hard enough. After a stock of lifetimes spent fighting, her body craves to follow its instinct, take a stance to throw the first blow. But, for once, Scáthach has a purpose, something to look forward to, and won't let her blood thruming for a fight, any stupid fight, take the wheel.

In the dark, she waits to get what she wants.

Cú Chulainn holds Gáe Bolg with all the might befitting the name of the hero he has become. Between his heavy palms, her spear looks like it has found its true, righteous owner. In their strong, steadfast hold, she recognizes the lessons she once offered to the man before her. 

Maybe, in a time like this, she should've been able to understand how a teacher may feel for their successful student, or even how a mother feels for her thriving son. But these words are too generous for all the void she actually feels inside. 

He moves closer to her, and the tip of the spear protrudes in her field of view. Her breath sticks to the walls of her throat, her blood thrums in her ears- her body acts in ways it hasn't for a lifetime now.

Scáthach doesn’t close her eyes- she wants to chew this moment piece by piece. Her student’s eyes, red as the red she thirsts for, are static, concrete. She’s used to seeing them frenetic, bulging in the search of the spear’s next victim, but she feels content with this apparent change. For reasons unknown, this is how she wants her final image of Cú Chulainn to be like- special, and a little peculiar.

Steps fray the silent black void, and finally those eyes are almost right in front of hers. She doesn’t even bother to take a last breath- she just keeps her eyes locked on those of her pupil.

First, Scáthach senses the tip of the blade drill her outermost skin, the membrane shrouding the emptiness she harbors inside and giving shape to the phantom. She revels at the sensation of her muscle tissue being ripped apart, just before it turns into a loving burn, as the spear digs deeper inside her. Its lean body pushes through her, thrusting the barbs straight onto veins and arteries. Tons of flesh turn into raw meat, all leading up to the grand finale, the spear bursting through her black heart and tearing it apart. Finally, bewitchingly, the spear cracks her back, the spine giving way to the beautiful weapon, like a butterfly shedding its ugly cocoon.

Moving on their own, her lips come together in a smile. Unlike them, her legs give up on her and she's forced to meet the floor. The figure above follows the descent.

A palm stops just above the gaping wound on her back, preventing her upper body from meeting the ground and deliciously digging into the open bruise. Another palm rests on her cheek; this contact has no precedent in their shared history. It's not the lunacy of their fights and their training, or the fever of the night they came together, yet nor is it the casualness of their hold on their almost perpetual drinks, or Scáthach's reprimanding pinches and slaps.

Her last moment is truly the greatest, after all. Her student may be a lazy fool, but he would never let her down when it really mattered.

And while her eyelids begin to close, Scáthach attempts to return Cú Chulainn's unique touch. It fails, landing somewhere between his jaw and his neck. Whatever- there is a reason shadows complement her so well, while he's the Child of Light.

*

Scáthach, in her essence, is an entity unable to sleep, and unable to dream. It was hard to define herself when she never knew when she started and when she ended, but that she knows for sure. So it was all a hallucination then- she has always been as prideful as her power authorized her to be, but she holds no contrition over a moment of weakness, if it gives her such an addictive hint of her one true desire.

The night breeze shakes the leaves, and to her untrained ears, used only to the fizzle of nothingness, it's as paper crackles together. It's enough to rouse her out of her unexplainable stupor, and away from the tree she had sat under. Scáthach follows the first road opened to her, up a misty hill, and already dreams of reaching its end and falling into space. Instead, the precipice of her walk is unexpected- Cú Chulainn is sitting on the foreign soil, with Gáe Bolg resting boastfully on his thighs, with his head up high towards the evasive clouds, entirely alone.

There's a needless feeling of deja vu here- like an inverse mirror, showing her student how she herself has always been: alone. Scáthach wishes she could say that the resentment that's creeping up on her surprises her, except it has the coziness of meeting an old friend. Cú Chulainn, once residing in the shadows by her side, managed to break through, and Scáthach was left behind- one with the shadows, unable to separate herself from them. But he's here now, and she suddenly wishes to take back time that was never hers.

Her step is- naturally? purposefully?- loud as she walks the final lines of the hill and sits next to him. Cú Chulainn gives a vague nod in her direction, before sticking his eyesight towards the sky again. On her end, Scáthach can only stare at the luscious red glistening the murk of the sky from where it sits on its owner's lap.

Almost instantly, he trails the residue of her persistent look, and the click of the tongue that breaks out of him fills their shared space with saturated, almost playful annoyance. “How persistent can you get? I agreed to do your dirty work, didn't I? You just have to wait a little more.”

“Just hoping you aren't slacking off like always.”, she murmurs.

“Are you kidding me? I couldn't, even if I wanted to. The things you've made me go through...!”

For a while, there's nothing to say, and the rustling leaves are the only ones that take it from here. Maybe it was all in preparation for the alien seeds Cú Chulainn was about to sow in their common ground with his next words.

“Is it strange that I find myself excited too? It's not like I... want to kill you. But the thought of fighting with you to the death, seeing a fighter like you fall from their own weapon... it makes my blood burn inside my veins.”

Scáthach places her hand on Gáe Bolg, in a nostalgic touch that threatens to make her necrose frame come alive from the vitality of her memories. Her palm glides across the spear, and it's unsure whether Cú Chulainn's hand was the destination all along. Two battle worn palms meet ; this touch is nostalgic too, just in a more distant way, dreamlike even.

“... Thank you, Setanta.”

Spelling out words for the first time, Scáthach finds, can placate the soul- if she can claim one of those- like nothing else, crystallizing sentiments that gnaw at your insides all your life, giving them to others to nurture them before they wilt in the glorious moment of death.

Cú Chulainn does not respond. Scáthach does not hold it against him- what can a student even do with their teacher's weird rambling, except nod along?

And then the silence overpowers all, with those cheeky leaves being the only renegades. Somewhere over Gáe Bolg's majestic skeleton, fingers meet, and the weight of an eerie promise oppresses the air around them.

**Author's Note:**

> cu: youre in for a big surprise  
> scathach: aww lol im excited  
> cu: i hired a deep web hitman to kill you  
> scathach: YES


End file.
